Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I've always been a fan of "Weird Al" Yankovic. Like so many competent professionals, he makes his job seem effortless. When listening to his music, you can't help but immediately think, "I can do that," which is exactly what my brothers, cousins, friends, and I attempt to do quite often. Over the years as popular songs and artists would release music we disliked, we would attempt to create our own parody of that song. I guess the intent was to try help others see the error in their ways for listening to such tripe. We would do this by imitating the artist and the way they sung and/or supply our own set of lyrics that usually included the name of our dog or simple potty humor. Not all songs fell under the category of ridicule, some just came about from what we happened to be watching on TV.

I'm afraid I can't take credit for these lyrics, although I wish I could. This was nothing short of pure inspiration conjured up by my brothers and cousins. The following lyrics are to be sung to the theme from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Which was always Transmitido en Español en SAP).

I gotta get up,I gotta get goin'I'm gonna see a friend of mine.He's tall dark and uglyI love him because he's just...

Raider, Tusken Raider,The toilet seat's coldWhoooooo...And that was pretty much it, they never came up with lyrics for the rest of the song. Which is what usually happened with most of the songs. Other parody classics we came up with included:

"I'm in a Hurry to Wipe My Bum" (Parody of "I'm in a Hurry (And Don't Know Why)" by Alabama)

I'm in a hurry to wipe my bum oh I'm,Poopin' poopin' til I'm all done.All I really have to do is wipe and leave,But I'm in a hurry and use my sleeve.

"The Poop Scoopin' Boogie" (Parody of "Boot Scootin' Boogie" by Brooks and Dunn)

Get down, turn around, go to town,Poop scoopin' boogie.

All we really did to this song was change two words, but it now has a different connotation.

"Diarrhea" (Parody of "Mamma Mia" by ABBA)

Diarrhea, here I go againMy my, I sure have to take a poo.

Again, not much else went into coming up with other words to finish the song. And of course there's:

"If You Like Queen Amidala" (Parody of "If You Like Piña Colada" by Rupert Holmes)

If you like Queen Amidala,And her big silver plane,If you are into Yoda,If you think Jar Jar is lame...

So yes, most of our experience as parody song writers were similar in theme, we simply used potty humor and some Star Wars references. Any other song that we tried to ad lib on the spot would just result in inserting different variations of our dog's name into the chanty. Needless to say, we weren't very good at parody song writing.

It's also quite ironic that I gripe so much about how much I despise blatant potty humor that seems to pop up in so many movies, yet it is the main inspiration of all our song lyrics. Maybe it's because there's so many things that can rhyme with words ending in, "-ee," and "-00."

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

This was a spot of freelance that came my way recently. They're illustrations that will be used to educate elementary school children. They didn't give me too many details about what was going on, but this is what I can gather. Let's begin now:

This is Gerry, Gerry is a geologist, but not a very good geologist.This is another geologist, his name is Gerry too. He's a better geologist than the other Gerry. This is Pam, she's a paleontologist, she's also Gerry's accomplice and the one who ordered Gerry to "push the button."Gerry has decided to carry out the job "the old fashioned way," by stoning the other Gerry. These are the stones and the tools that Gerry will need to get the job done.This is the hole that the carcass will be thrown into. Notice, Gerry has also chosen a remote location that no one is likely to find.The stiff goes in here.This is what the inside of a hole looks like. Once you've hit bedrock, that's deep enough.Here is a close up of fossils that you might find in the hole. Take them with you, you might be able to sell them. Boom! You've just increased your pay-off.Well, it's done.Here are a wide variety of stones that can be used to carry out lapidation.If you'd like to make your own stone, there are three simple steps. It may take awhile, so you need to get started right away.This is Pam. She pays Gerry off with a giant dog biscuit.She swears she won't say a word.The End.